Steadily, and however slowly, Sanghyuk has figured out how to deal with Jaehwan. Jaehwan is a rubik’s cube of emotion and personality. To keep up, you have to change when it changes. Adapt to survive – This is the theory of evolution.

The trick has remained true most of the time, when he can pass Hongbin his phone whenever the mean messages get too vicious for him to handle, or when he can remember that Jaehwan is on his side, even if sometimes Jaehwan doesn’t really act like they’re on the same side.

Regardless, when Jaehwan takes a seat next to him and starts talking, Sanghyuk doesn’t want to run away. They may not be on the same side, but they do have the same enemy.  

“How’s things going on with you?” Jaehwan puts his phone in his pocket, and Sanghyuk slightly lowers his guard when he doesn’t pull anything out of it. “The trial is looming. You looking forward to it?”

Jaehwan reeks of cigarettes and a sharp bitter smell that Sanghyuk has grown to learn as alcohol. The cloth encasing his fists are worn out again; probably got into another fight. He’s wearing new boots, and new socks. His jacket seems cleaner than it did before.

Sanghyuk looks up from his book. “Actually, more looking forward to getting it over with.”

“Same, I guess,” Jaehwan takes his phone out again and fiddles with it, like he’s nervous. “I haven’t really had such a great time since the whole, you know, TBI thing. What bad luck, huh.”

It’s not exactly what Sanghyuk was expecting to hear. Usually Jaehwan taunts him; tells him that he’s going to panic during the trial – which makes him actually panic – or that he’s not strong enough to handle the verdict. This is the first real time that he’s felt like Jaehwan is talking to him and not just talking down to him.

Sanghyuk hesitates, unsure of his motives, but Jaehwan barrels forward. As he always does.

“It scares me that something from… them will stay with me for the rest of my life. Like, I can’t just leave it behind, because it’s with me for, like, ever. Like, forever kind of ever. Like, even if I quit smoking and alcohol and eat healthy and stuff. You get what I’m saying? It .” Jaehwan looks up, but Sanghyuk just looks stunned, so he backtracks. “Oh. You know what, never mind. I shouldn’t have – We’re not even friends.”

“No, no. I –” Sanghyuk tries to get the words out as fast as he can, before it’s all too late, before they lose this moment of honesty, even though he doesn’t really want to tell Jaehwan things if he can help it. “My – er… My right hand doesn’t work too well. I can’t grab things properly, my fingers rest weirdly, and sometimes it – um – it shakes too much for me to eat with chopsticks. Or any utensil at all on bad days, for that matter.”

Jaehwan looks like he’s uncomfortable, like he doesn’t know what to say, and it’s so unlike him that Sanghyuk suddenly feels the need to say something, because he knows what it’s like to be in this position. It’s too much weight to handle alone, what they’ve been through. It crushes you wherever you go. When you sleep, when you wake, when you try to let yourself be happy – everywhere you look, it’s there. You want someone to know what’s happening in your life because sometimes it’s just too much, sometimes you wake up and you feel like you’re drowning, but no one understands it the way you need them to understand. So you sink, and you try not to move as it pulls you under. You try to stay calm, but you see everyone around you functioning well, and you’re the only person that’s going crazy. If Sanghyuk can look past all the pain that Jaehwan has brought him, he thinks he can see him almost completely submerged.

And he knows how rocky it can be at the beginning: when you’re not sure who to trust, or whether kindness is real. He knows how it feels like gaining solid ground under your feet on some mornings instead of sludge. It’s surprising, and It’s hard to wake up to those kinds of emotions. You feel as if you’re not real anymore – as if everything is a delusion and you’ve completely succumbed to the insanity.

“If it helps, it looks completely fine to me,” Jaehwan peeks over, breaking train of thought. Sanghyuk, instead of instinctively hiding his hand behind his back, s it forward, as if there is something to be proud of.

“I’ve been working really hard on it.” Sanghyuk says. “I’ve – um, I’ve kind of learnt that most things get better with time and practice. It also helps if you have faith in at least a little bit of it, you know? Even if –”

“Even if we don’t believe in that sort of bull, right?” Jaehwan rubs a stain off the floor with the toe of his shoe. “Time and practice don’t do nothin’ on the streets. Or when we’re in pain.”

And that’s the thing that wins Sanghyuk over. It’s not that it’s hard talking to regular people – if there’s anyone hard to talk to, its Jaehwan. But regular people don’t understand. Sanghyuk tries to remember the last time he’s made someone get a particular emotion, and the only person he can think of is Daewon. He doesn’t want anyone else to have no one to turn to when things get bad; or if they need something when it’s too hard to ask. So he reaches out towards Jaehwan before it’s too late: before they get used to this awkward ground of avoiding each other because it’s too heavy to talk about the things that they carry.

“Jaehwan hyung, have you… Have you had lunch?”            

“Not really,” Jaehwan says, pulling out coupons from the back of his jeans pockets. “But Wonshik gave these to me, and I was hoping I had someone to use them with. I can’t redeem them by myself.”

By myself. Sanghyuk repeats the word in his head until it sounds weird, even in silence. Jaehwan never admits things like these to anyone.

So even though Sanghyuk doesn’t normally take a gamble on things, he says, “Sure, let’s go. I think it’s pretty near here.”

***

Jaehwan tries to harmlessly flirt with him on the way, gently brushing his arm and baring his neck suggestively in ways that make Sanghyuk go back to times he doesn’t want to go back to. Sanghyuk starts getting nervous, but he just pulls his jacket in tighter, and hands out jokes whenever Jaehwan gets too close. Sanghyuk keeps thinking about Hongbin – his smile, his embrace, and he’s still wishing that Hongbin was next to him when he realizes they’re walking down an unfamiliar street.  

The riptide of scars along his stomach start burning.

“You okay?” Jaehwan says, taking his hands out of his pocket. “You cold?”

Sanghyuk stops walking. “Do you know where you’re going? I think we’re lost.”

“Nah,” Jaehwan turns around and points down the street. “It’s just right down that way.”

He hesitates, not knowing whether or not to believe someone like Jaehwan, but Jaehwan smiles. And it’s so rare to see his hands loose at his sides, not tense like he’s looking for a war, that Sanghyuk just… follows. His brain is already half way to shut down mode; the only thing he can do now is grasp his phone tightly.

But then he knows he’s made the wrong choice when Jaehwan grabs his elbow and steers him toward a smaller street.

He’s got the enemy all wrong. There’s nothing there but a dead end; rubbish strewn across the drains and overfilled bins. The smell is not the only thing that makes Sanghyuk’s stomach turn.

Jaehwan pushes him so hard that he almost spins uncontrollably towards a brick wall, and that messes his orientation enough to cut through to his consciousness.

“Hyung?” Sanghyuk tries to get out of Jaehwan’s hold but it’s useless. “Hyung!”

“You’re a troublesome little ,” Jaehwan slams him into the wall and pins him there by his neck. “I was living well until I met you, do you know that?”

The panic dribbles down from his head all the way to his heart and it doesn’t hurt at first, not for a while. It’s mostly the shock that causes Sanghyuk’s legs to give out – the shock that Jaehwan’s fingers are anchored into his neck. He tries to find purchase again, but his knees can’t give that to him. They want to kneel and beg for forgiveness, since almost everyone likes him better on his knees, except Jaehwan just isn’t letting go. As Jaehwan squeezes tighter and tighter, Sanghyuk’s whole body starts to tremble uncontrollably, trying to take in air as the danger of the situation really dawns on him. Jaehwan’s hair catches on his eyelashes as he moves closer and closer, his hand crushing. The throbbing of hindered blood circulation makes its way up into Sanghyuk’s head like fire.

It’s an unbearable, unrelenting pain, where Jaehwan’s thumb crushes into his neck. His throat feels like it’s about to be pushed all the way into his spine, his muscles and skin collapsing uselessly under the strength of Jaehwan.

But Jaehwan doesn’t think to stop, even when Sanghyuk opens his mouth to breathe again and nothing comes out except a demented gasp. His words are no longer words – just air with no where to go. For a flash, he thinks I’m going to die like this, and the thought sobers him up enough for him to claw at Jaehwan’s arms. His vision is darkening; spots crowding for space in the center as the fear builds, but he registers his nails digging into flesh, maybe even making real damage as he tries to push Jaehwan away.

Still, Jaehwan doesn’t let him go. He’s staring at Sanghyuk’s neck with an ugly fascination, but never meeting Sanghyuk’s eyes. His lips are moving, but he doesn’t seem to be saying anything at all. It’s then that Sanghyuk realizes that Jaehwan is manic, that he’s not going to stop until Sanghyuk dies, because that’s how much hate he harbors in his heart.

Sanghyuk is not ready to die like this, at least not until he figures out what he did to deserve so much hate. So, as his eyes start closing with the lack of oxygen, and his head feels like it’s about to explode with heat, he pushes against Jaehwan’s chest with all of his might. 

Sanghyuk didn’t think he had the strength left in him, didn’t think he had enough of the fight left. But the next thing he knows, he’s on the floor, coughing his lungs out, neck unbelievably sore, and Jaehwan is stumbling backwards from him, hands shaking from the exertion. The phone lies out of reach.

There’s nothing but silence for a while, as Jaehwan stares at his own two hands. Sanghyuk wants to say please, he wants to say stop, he wants to ask why, but before he can, Jaehwan is onto him again. Sanghyuk feels boots digging into his stomach as he instinctively curls up – protects his head and neck, but Jaehwan kicks at any exposed area he sees. In his side, in his back, towards his tailbone. It feels like the pain of being starved again, except in his whole being. Even in his heart.  

“You bastard –“ Jaehwan is almost heaving with the effort of his kicks, and Sanghyuk is still trying to take in air. “You ing ruined my life, this is all your fault. I was living well, unlike you, motherer. Why couldn’t you have just left –” Kick. “It –” Kick. “Alone?”

Sanghyuk swallows instinctively as he bites his cries of pain (he tries to be quiet, he really does, but he hasn’t been hit like this in almost a year, it hurts, hurts, hurts everywhere). He tastes blood running down his throat, skin scraping off his ribs.

“When you’ve been hurt like that, you either submit to everyone or you refuse to submit anymore. I’m ing strong, unlike you, so I chose to live with myself. Why couldn’t you have just toughened up like a man?” Jaehwan spits out. “You like being weak, don’t you? Then I’ll show you how weak you are!”

What comes next is a torrent of kicks in the back of his thighs. Sanghyuk is almost sure Jaehwan is going to break something, maybe a leg, until suddenly, everything stops. All that’s left is the intense pain and burning in Sanghyuk’s body.

“You ing weakling.” Jaehwan spits and it lands on Sanghyuk’s hair; the sides that Hakyeon shaved so carefully for him. “Good-for-nothing.”

Moments pass and he has no more strength to move. Time passes as if in slow motion, or as if they’re underwater. But he knows Jaehwan isn’t going to walk away like this. He knows Jaehwan is expecting him to say something. So he does.

“Y – You’re right, you’re the stronger one.” Sanghyuk chokes the words out, eyes watering as he coughs endlessly from the blood in his throat. “But who do you have, hyung?”

It obviously riles Jaehwan up, and Sanghyuk wasn’t expecting anything less.

He feels himself being pulled up by his collar. And despite how much he’s anticipating it, he still makes a sound of surprise when Jaehwan’s fist connects to his cheek.

Sanghyuk really didn’t think he had the strength left in him. But the words, no matter how much suffering the body is in, manage to find their way out. “It’s not m – me you should be hating, hyung. It’s re – really not me.”

Jaehwan digs his palm into Sanghyuk’s scalp, tangles his fingers in Sanghyuk’s hair, and for a moment they both think he’s going to strike again. Yet, Jaehwan (to his own surprise, as well) just … lets go. Sanghyuk crumples to the floor, clutching at his face where it throbs passionately. Jaehwan stares at him, then walks away slowly.

And almost as if he can no longer stand to be with himself, his walk picks up pace after a while and he starts to run. The sound of his boots on loose gravel echo down the alley and loses itself in the sounds of vehicles on the main street.